San Francisco parents band together to save day-care center

The Governor's Department of Finance has revealed one of the sources of California's budget crisis: tax breaks. Its most recent estimate of credits, exemptions and deductions totals more than $40 billion for this budget year. Next year is projected to be even higher.

Some $30 billion of that is made up of personal income tax breaks, such as home mortgage interest deductions, social security and state lottery exemptions.  Corporate tax breaks come to nearly $4 billion a year.

Supporters of these tax breaks say many of them are critical for the economy, and ultimately pay for themselves in generated revenue. But the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office has called for revisions, and the state's teachers union has launched an initiative to remove some corporate tax breaks entirely.  For his part, Governor Schwarzenegger has called for reducing some corporate tax breaks, if California doesn't receive the billions of dollars requested from the Federal Government.

Whatever the causes are behind the State's budget crisis, the effects are being felt by Californians. Here in San Francisco, the downturn has echoed through to even the most basic elements of everyday life. 

A few weeks ago, we got a call from listener Brian Brooks.

BRIAN BROOKS: I’m calling about a story idea or just a problem that we are having with our day care, Children’s Village South of Market. Catholic Charities is closing our daycare because it no longer follows the mission of Catholic Charities. This is an ongoing issue for the daycare center. We at the center serve a low-income, mixed and widely diverse group of people. The daycare is being closed without proper warning or proper cause. We’re trying to save it.

Crosscurrents sent reporter Rina Palta to look into the situation at Children’s Village and investigate San Francisco’s lack of affordable childcare. She has this report. 

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RINA PALTA: It’s a Friday morning in San Francisco and a lot of people are going through the last commuting slog of the week. People Like Megan Laurance, who’s trying to extract her two toddlers from the back seat of a tiny car so she can drop them at preschool.  

MEGAN LAURANCE: Yeah, I drive a 1998 Honda Civic hatchback and that’s our family car. You have to be a bit of a contortionist.

It’s just a reality you accept when you’re trying to raise a family in a congested city--you might not be able to shuttle your kids around in a minivan. In fact, there are a lot of little inconveniences and some big hurdles to having kids here. Parents say finding good, affordable childcare is at the top of that list. 

LISA HUBBARD: Aside from needing a place to go, for your kids to be while you’re at work, you need a place where you feel that they’re safe and learning.

ARWA KADURA:  Do you just give up a career and give up a livelihood so at least your child is well attended? But then you still have a mortgage to pay along with your bills and your car payments. 

ElSIBA NINEN: Infant care is even harder than preschool. As hard as preschool is, infant care is infinitely harder.

NICKISHA PEACOCK: The cost is ridiculous. Right now, the waiting list for childcare is enormous.

KADURA: It really is. You don’t realize that until you get pregnant and everyone around you says, “What waiting lists are you on?” and you’re like, “What do you mean?” I haven’t even had my child yet and they kind of start to give you a reality check.

Lisa Hubbard, Arwa Kadura, Eisiba Niner and Nickisha Peacock all pretty much thought they had hit the jackpot when they found Children’s Village in SOMA. The preschool stands on a large lot owned by the Catholic Arch Diocese of San Francisco. In 1999, the Arch Diocese began leasing part of the lot to a charitable arm of the church for one dollar a month, so that Catholic Charities could operate Children’s Village. The preschool has a garden, it’s economically and ethnically diverse, it offers care for infants, and for hatch-back driving mom Megan Laurance, it’s even got a parking lot.

LAURANCE: Once you’re in here, you realize what an incredible place it is. This place is thriving. There’re people waiting two years to get into this place. This is an example of how to do it right. So when the news came that there was a risk of this place closing, we were just devastated.

Here’s the problem. The Arch Diocese wants to sell the land the school sits on. Which means by June, the parents have to find a new place for their kids. 

LAURANCE: 50% of the families here are low income. The low-income spots in childcare are really hard to get. I just don’t know where these folks are going to go. So it’s not just me and my two kids who don’t have a spot; there are a hundred people lined up behind us to get into a place like this.

Statewide, childcare is in short supply. While San Francisco is better off than most California cities, there are still simply not enough slots in childcare facilities to meet the needs of working parents with small kids--especially low-income parents.

CANDACE WONG: For infant and toddler care, we need to build at least another 3,000 spaces in the city, and for preschools, another 1,000 spaces at least. 

That’s Candace Wong, with the San Francisco-based Low Income Investment Fund. She works with the city and county to help finance the building and maintenance of childcare facilities.  And over the years, she’s helped Children’s Village secure over a million dollars. 

WONG: We made some major investments in that site and we had hope that it would be around for many, many years. And the loss definitely in that area, especially with all the development that’ll bring businesses into that corridor, we would lose at least 112 childcare spaces. So definitely that would have a major impact if that center were to be closed.

Other facilities are closing in San Francisco, too. Wong says part of the problem is that landlords evict childcare centers from their land.

JEFF BIALICK: I’m sitting right here. I’m sitting right now in leased space. And I don’t have the legal right to stay here as long as I want for the current rent. 

Jeff Bialick, the Executive Director of Catholic Charities is in his office near San Francisco’s Embarcadero. He says during the years Catholic Charities was receiving grants to fix up the space for Children’s Village, it was clear to everyone involved that the Arch Diocese might sell the land when the 10-year lease ended.  But he says it was worth the investment.

BIALICK: I would never think that money that was invested in a remarkable set of programs and services that have served thousands of kids and thousands of families in this community for the last 10-12 years, I would never see that as wasted. I would say that was a tremendous use of those public resources. 

But it wasn’t sustainable. Bialick says Catholic Charities is hoping to reopen Children’s Village in a new location, probably with fewer slots. He says a new Children’s Village would be located inside of a low-income housing project and would primarily serve the population that lives there. As for the current families at Children’s Village, Bialick says it’s unfortunate that they’ll have to find a new daycare, but what they’re experiencing is a symptom of a larger problem—that a reasonable tuition, state subsidies for those who can’t pay, and lots of government and private help are not always enough to sustain a childcare center.

BIALICK: We agree as a society that developing our kids to their full potential is an important thing, but we don’t resource it at the level where it should be. We don’t resource our public schools at the level where it should be and we don’t resource childcare at the level where it should be. 

So the parents of Children’s Village are in the process of trying to build a new network of partnerships and investors to keep the current center open. The parents’ group is led by Megan Laurance. 

LAURANCE: So right now we’re at the stage of having a couple of really viable options. There’s a couple of ways this could play out. Some nonprofits could work together, it’s kind of analogous to a tenancy in common in that we pool all of our resources and make a bid to purchase the property. 

Laurance says the Arch Diocese is asking for 4.75 million dollars for the lot, which contains a number of vacant buildings that need refurbishing and can’t be torn down because they’re landmarks. She doesn’t think developers will want much to do with the site. 

LAURANCE: If we’re out of here in June and this property sits vacant for three or four years and there’s just tumbleweed rolling around—it would be just devastating to be driving by this property and think what could still be here. An essential service to the city. a thriving, diverse, active community of families and staff--just to be gone. 

The parents’ group’s first step was to form its own non-profit in the hopes of taking over the childcare center’s license. Now, the parents are hoping the city might get involved and buy the property. But mostly, they want more time to work out a long-term plan to keep Children’s Village open. 

In San Francisco, I’m Rina Palta for Crosscurrents.

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For more information on childcare in San Francisco, please visit San Francisco’s Department of Children, Youth & Their Families or the Low Income Investment Fund.